1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to determining page elements to display in response to a search.
2. Related Art
A search engine enables a user to search for web pages. A user may submit a query to a search engine. In an example, the user may submit a query using a browser on a client. The browser may send the query as a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) request. The HTTP request containing the query may be sent to a server. The server, in turn, sends it onto a search engine. The search engine returns a set of results to the server. The server may generate a page to display the set of results to the user. In an example, the page may be encoded in hypertext markup language (HTML). The server may then send the page to the client as an HTTP response. The browser may then render the page for the user to view.
The server may include a page element on the page, in addition to the set of results. The page element may correspond to a classification. The server may determine a classification, and trigger a page element that corresponds to the classification.
A traditional approach determines a classification based on the query. This approach can problematic, because the query may be an ambiguous indicator of the user's intent. For example, if the query was “burns”, a page element related to medical conditions may be generated in the page. However, the page element related to medical conditions may not be relevant to the user, if the user meant “burns” to refer to the comedian, George Burns.
Methods and systems are needed to generate page elements that more accurately correspond to the user's intent.